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You are not giving me any (OS) choice

Last week, I was asked by a relative to shop for a new netbook. The new ‘puter will be used for basic PC tasks (document creation, web, mail and chat) of my college student cousin. I volunteered to do the window shopping and suggested a little over 20K Php is enough.

First stop, a local reseller of Lenovo. I really like Lenovo’s IdeaPad S10-2 model. The design is simple. It’s thinner and lighter than the usual notebooks and the price is within the range I expected.

QuickStart key – with this key, you can boot the netbook in under 10 seconds and instantly connect to the internet for email, chat or VOIP. It uses the SplashTop technology installed in the netbook’s on-board Flash memory. No need to load the default OS for a quick check of webmail or chat.

Perfect for my college student cousin.

After a quick demo, I found out that Windows XP SP3 comes pre-installed. I asked the shop agent if I can wipe out the pre-installed XP and install another OS. He said it’s possible. I then asked if it’s possible to buy a unit without XP and then cutoff a few thousand bucks since we won’t be using the pre-installed XP anyway. He said it’s not possible.

Oh OK. On to the next shop.

Might as well get an Asus Eee PC , at least I have the option to get Linux or Windows OS pre-installed. Or so I thought.

I like this one even better. The design looks better ergonomically than Ideapad. Almost the same features as Ideapad and battery life is touted to be much longer (6-10 hours, although I didn’t tested that long 😛 ). Price, also within the range.

Another perfect netbook for my cousin.

Seeing that the installed OS is also Windows XP, I asked the same question to the shop agent.

Is it possible to buy a unit without XP and then cutoff a few thousand bucks since we won’t be using the pre-installed XP anyway? Well, same answer. He said it’s not possible and added that the previous Xandros pre-installed units was discontinued. (Is this true? I can’t find anything on the web).

Why are you treating me like this? Why should I buy something that I won’t be using anyway?

3 responses to “You are not giving me any (OS) choice”

I think Asus indeed discontinued the Xandros versions… I couldn’t find any here in Cebu either, and finally bought one with XP… (Replaced with Xandros since then, because that starts in 20 seconds compared to 2 minutes under XP)